Former
United Nations Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday told the
2006 special forum of the Perdana Global Peace Organization that
the concepts of “war on terror” and an “axis of
evil” are just as fictitious as the so-called “weapons
of mass destruction” that the Bush administration claimed
were in Iraq. “They are all fictions,” he said.

Yet, noted Halliday, while the world is abandoning people’s
right to food and housing, which should be a priority, lives and
financial resources are being wasted in the war on terrorism, which
has hijacked those greater priorities. Halliday referred to the
war against and occupation of Iraq — not to mention the possibility
of war against Iran — as “a tragedy that we all have
to take responsibility for.”

..Denis
Halliday & Dr. Mahathir Mohamad

The former UN official drew a distinction between
what he called “state terrorism,” which, he noted, is
“conducted from 30,000 feet,” and “terrorism of
resistance and defense.” The latter, he pointed out, can be
violent, but, he said, “We are surprised when it mirrors state
terrorism.” State terrorism is “impersonal” while
the other form of terrorism is “intimate,” but both
are equally to be condemned.

Halliday is concerned that people in the United States — and
around the globe — watch television and see state terrorism
being conducted daily and don’t take action. He said that
this reflects “a hidden acceptance of terrorism,” that
suggests there is “terrorism lurking within us all.”

PROFILE: DENIS HALLIDAY.............DENIS
HALLIDAY is a native of Ireland who served from 1997 to
1998 as an assistant secretary general of the United Nations
acting as the UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq. Halliday
managed distribution of goods under the “Oil for Food”
program, responsible for verifying Iraqi compliance with
the program. He resigned that post — and from the
United Nations — in protest of international policy
oward Iraq, a policy that was largely being dictated by
the United States. A graduate of Trinity College in Dublin,
Halliday spent most of his career in service to the UN in
a variety of posts, specializing in development and humanitarian
assistance.

Killing by the United States, in the name of the United States,
is portrayed by the Bush administration as being “patriotic,”
but, in Halliday’s view, the United States is “the most
dangerous nation on Earth . . . engaged in a mad dash to dominate
and intrude” in the lives and nations of peoples around the
globe.

However, he said, “the American people have been hijacked
and misinformed” by their own government and the mass media.”
However, it is Americans’ responsibility to take control of
their own country,” just as, he said, “we’ve all
got to take control of our own countries,” saying that he,
as an Irishman, believes that his own people have responsibilities
and obligations to speak out as well.

The so-called “war on terror,” he suggested, “is
a device to impose a new form of colonialism, an excuse to expand
the imperial presence of the United States,” as outlined in
the now-infamous report of the neo-conservative Project for a New
American Century which declared the need for a “new Pearl
Harbor” to stimulate Americans into supporting global intervention
— conquest — by the United States.

Former American President Dwight Eisenhower was right, Halliday
noted, when Eisenhower warned of “the military- industrial
complex,” but Halliday said that this should today be referred
to as the “military-industrial-media-energy complex.”
Halliday condemned the media for the part it has played in “the
glorification of war” and said, “We need a media that
is free and not controlled.”

In launching the war against Iraq, the United States and Britain
chose to act outside the framework of the United Nations. This was
a failure of the UN, for, according to Halliday’s judgment,
“We are always going to fail if [the UN] doesn’t have
member states with good will.” Pointing out that during his
years at the United Nations, Halliday encouraged ethics training
for UN officers and employees, he added that “ethics training
is also required in the White House.” And, he noted, to change
an organization, “you have to start at the top.” President
Bush, he said, is “making decisions that destroy the lives
of thousands . . . sad to say, millions.” Iraq and Iran, he
believes, were “irresistible” targets for those directing
policy in the Bush administration.

Having attended the first Perdana forum in 2005, where the Kuala
Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War was first hammered out, Halliday
urged the current government of Malaysia to take the lead in formally
introducing that historic initiative to the United Nations and the
world.

KUALA
LUMPUR LEADING
GLOBAL PEACE EFFORT

AUTHORS: During the special session
of the Perdana Global Peace Organization, AFP correspondent Michael
Collins Piper’s underground JFK assassination classic, Final
Judgment (shown above), was offered for sale alongside the writings
of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is himself
a widely read author of numerous books.

MEETING OF THE MINDS: AFP’s
Michael Collins Piper (left) and former Malaysian Prime Minister
Dr. Mahathir Mohamad are shown discussing the amazing political
power of the mass media in America. Dr. Mahathir has been viciously
attacked in the American media because he has dared to publicly
and forcefully criticize the Zionist agenda.